Monday 18 November 2013

Diary - November 2013 - Ireland and the environment

A couple of points have come up recently, which bring me back to my argument as put forward in 'Ireland and the Enclosure of the Commons'. 

Firstly, the decision of the Supreme Court in Dublin on the case between Sligo County Council, and the owners of historic Lissadell House.   A badly conducted legal campaign, ostensibly to defend rights of way around the Lissadell estate, has wasted a sum of money that might originally have brought house and estate into public ownership some years ago, and has probably set arguments about public access to amenity lands back by some years. 

Second, last Tuesday, Fintan O'Toole in his Irish Times column, drew attention to the proliferation of ugly, obtrusive, and largely unnecessary barbed wire and high tensile fences on Ireland's mountains.

Why fencing in our high mountain pastures is really the height of folly

It would appear that the Department of Agriculture is offering farmers grants, related to the Single Farm Payment scheme, to construct fences.  This means that on terrain where even sheep are rarely seen, one encounters and struggles to pass fencing.  Another issue of access for walkers on our magnificent mountains.

Conor

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